User Review : Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Dawnguard DLC

Vampires suck

After long and painful wait, first Skyrim DLC is here also for pc. Putting nearly 80 hours to original game, i was desperate to get any new content for this great game and here it finaly is.
Once you find out how to actually play the new content, which can take some time, the ride can start. The decision whether to go with Vampires or Dawnguard was pretty clear to me. Who would want to run around with crossbow when you can turn to cool vampire, right ? Wrong, vampire sucks big time. It's such pain to actually play vampire that you will stop playing as vampire after few terrible laggy transform animations. I didn't find any part of being vampire enjoyable. The magic was ok, the new skill tree would probably add few nice new skills, but it means you would have to actually play as vampire to get those. The deal breaker here is that you can't open any door, chest, pick up potions. Nothing. You are just big clumsy flying bat with dull spells and the movement itself is just weird. Using bat teleport, which seems cool at the begging, usually just fires you straight into the wall. So there you go with vampire, its cool roughly for about 10 minutes.

Another significant reason for not playing as vampire was, that i was much weaker as vampire. I am level 40, one hand melee and restoration spell. Not everyone has such high level, but many people has much higher level. At expert difficulty, the whole DLC, apart few small exceptions, didn't provide any challenge. Although that was big complaint towards end of Skyrim, that game was very easy, there was done very little to improve this.
What i would expect from DLC with this price is additional content, which will provide whole new experience, real challenge for player and at least something extra. There was not single weapon or armor better then what i already had and i don't have the best possible armor in the game by far. But then, there would be no real point of having better weapon/armor anyway.

Although whole DLC could have been so much better, mostly after such a long time of waiting, it is still new content and you can spend roughly 10 more hours in Skyrim with new content, so that's good news. Tho another issue is that most of the environment seemed rehashed to me. There were definitely some great moments and new environments, but you still feel like you've seen it all before.

Closure is, that if you loved Skyrim you have to buy the DLC no matter what, but be prepared to be rather disappointed. I was and i was disappointed anyway.
Once you reach the end, you will just sadly keep standing there, to realize that this was over and you will desperately run around Skyrim for next few hours to enjoy a bit more of the great game, that doesn't have anything to offer you anymore. Only after this painful realization you can officially declare the end to this new journey, which was far shorter and far less enjoyable than you hoped for.
Let's hope next DLC will get it right. In the meantime i will eventually play as Dawnguard, since i am sure i will miss Skyrim again in no time.